TITLE: The Road not Taken
SPOILER WARNING: Pilot
RATING: G
CONTENT WARNING: None
CLASSIFICATION: V
SUMMARY: Every time a choice is made, an alternative is discarded.
The Road not Taken
By Brandon D. Ray
Special Agent Dana Scully walked purposefully down the corridors of the J. Edgar
Hoover Building, her heels clicking metronomically on the linoleum floor.
For the dozenth time since receiving the phone call yesterday afternoon, she
wondered what this was all about. Section Chief Blevins had said only that it
concerned a possible new assignment, which didn't make any sense at all, since
her teaching fellowship at Quantico still had another year to run. A slight
apprehension in the back of her mind caused her to wonder if Blevins was
dissatisfied with her work, but she had enough confidence in her own abilities
that she didn't take that possibility very seriously.
She arrived at Blevins' office and rapped lightly on the door. His voice called
out for her to enter, and she pushed the door open and stepped inside.
She found herself facing not just Blevins, but two other men as well, neither of
whom she had ever met before. One, seated next to the Section Chief's desk, was
silver-haired and wore wire-rimmed glasses. The other leaned casually against a
filing cabinet next to a bookcase, smoking a cigarette. As she she walked over
to stand in front of Blevins' desk, the man with the cigarette gazed at her
appraisingly, and she felt an unexplained chill race down her spine.
She expected the Section Chief to introduce the two other men, but he did not.
"Agent Scully," he said. "Thank you for coming on such short notice." He
gestured at a chair, and waited while she sat down, then continued. "We see
you've been with us for just over two years.
"Yes, sir." Where was this interview going? The facts of her educational and
professional background were readily available in her personnel file -- which
Blevins quite evidently had sitting on his desk in front of him -- but he
nevertheless seemed to want to go over it with her.
Blevins continued, "You went to medical school, but you chose not to practice.
How'd you come to work for the FBI?"
Well, that one was easy enough. "Well, sir, I was recruited out of medical
school My parents still think it was an act of rebellion, but I saw the FBI as
a place where I could distinguish myself."
That was a bit of an understatement; in fact, her entire family had argued with
her for months about this decision. Her brother Bill had been the worst, and
only Charlie had seemed to really understand. "Nice to know that I'm not the
only black sheep in the family," he'd remarked the day he drove her to the FBI
Academy.
Now the silvery-haired man with glasses was speaking, and he was asking her
whether she was familiar with a Special Agent Mulder. At hearing the name, her
eyebrows shot up. Was THAT what this was all about?
"Yes, I am," she replied.
That seemed to surprise them. "How so?" asked the silvery-haired man.
"By reputation. Agent Mulder's an Oxford-educated psychologist who wrote a
monograph on serial killers and the occult, that helped catch Monte Propps in
1988. Generally thought of as the best analyst in the Violent Crimes Section."
She hesitated for a moment, then added Agent Mulder's Academy nickname: Spooky
Mulder.
That seemed to upset the man smoking the cigarette. No, not upset,
exactly....but it did bother him, seemed to make him uncomfortable. She
wondered if the man could be Agent Mulder's patron, and hoped that she hadn't
stepped on the toes of someone important.
Now Blevins was talking again. "What I'll also tell you is that Agent Mulder
has developed a consuming devotion to an unassigned project outside the Bureau
mainstream. Are you familiar with the so-called 'X-Files'?"
So that WAS what the meeting was about. Scully felt conflicting emotions. She
liked her current assignment; it was comfortable, familiar. She felt that she
was doing valuable work, and that she was contributing something important to
her country.
At the same time, she liked a challenge, and the X-Files were certainly that.
She didn't really know very much about them, but she had heard rumors....
"I believe they have to do with unexplained phenomena," she said.
"More or less," Blevins replied. "The reason you're here, Agent Scully, is that
we want you to assist Mulder on these 'X-Files'. You will write field reports
on your activities, along with your observations on the validity of the work."
The cigarette smoking man had turned away from her; at Blevins words he now
turned and gazed at her again, over his shoulder. Her eyes flicked at him
briefly; the sense of unease she was getting from this man was almost palpable,
and it was distracting her.
There was also something she didn't much care for in Blevins' tone. She
considered herself first and foremost to be a scientist, but if she was reading
the Section Chief's tone and body language correctly, he was asking her to
surrender her objectivity, and that was something she wasn't willing to do for
ANYONE. Still, she had to be cautious; Blevins was a powerful man, and he could
wreak havoc with her career if she gave him cause to do so.
Choosing her words carefully, she asked, "Am I to understand that you want me to
debunk the X-Files Project, sir?"
"Agent Scully, we trust you'll make the proper scientific analysis," Blevins
said blandly. And then the interview wound down.
Scully quietly seethed at herself as she rode the elevator down to the basement.
She'd been such an idiot. The interview had gone fairly well, until Blevins
came to the part about her role in the matter. Wittingly or unwittingly, he had
stepped on something very precious to her: Her devotion to science and
objectivity. That had been bad enough, but then she had had the poor judgment
to challenge him on it. Oh, no one could fault the words she had used, just as
there was nothing in the words Blevins had used that anyone could point to by
way of criticism. But she could tell from his eyes that he had not been pleased
by her response.
The elevator doors opened. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the
basement hallway. The walls were lined with shelving, and there seemed to be
boxes everywhere -- excess files, she supposed, materials which wouldn't fit in
their proper location, but which someone felt were too important to be thrown
away.
She walked rapidly down the corridor, and stopped in front of the door at the
end of the hallway. There was no nameplate, no marking of any kind, but unless
she was completely turned around, this had to be the office she was looking for.
She rapped lightly on the door.
A voice floated out to her, faintly sarcastic, but with a hint of...something
else, too. "Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted."
She took that as an invitation to enter, and pushed the door open and stepped
across the threshold. She paused for a moment, and let her gaze drift across
the room. The place was incredibly cluttered, with files, papers and assorted
knick-knacks piled three and four deep on every available flat surface. The
walls were covered with photographs, newspaper clippings, and who-knew-what, and
on one wall was a large poster with a picture of a U.F.O. on it and a caption
reading, "I want to believe".
A woman was seated at the room's only desk, her back to the door. She was bent
over a light board, examining a set of slides. Even from the back, Scully could
see that the woman was beautiful. Scully spotted a nameplate sitting on the
desk: Special Agent Samantha Mulder. So she was in the right place; this was
her new partner.
Stepping forward and extending her hand, she said, "Agent Mulder? I'm Dana
Scully. I've been assigned to work with you...."
Fini